Virtual Summit Submission

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Political science & urban and regional planning

Biography

Courtney Tagay received her undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She is inspired by indigenous perspectives to understand how policy and land tenure systems have shaped societies today.
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She looks forward to building upon her undergraduate studies in graduate school at Mānoaʻs Department of Urban and Regional Planning. Her academic interests focus on the common themes of political ecology and the ways in which policy decisions have shaped the well-being of local island communities.

Project

Restorying Forest Biographies Through Oral Histories in Sulawesi
Forest priorities are determined by the authority of the state through forming policy on whether a forested area is conserved or harvested. Nevertheless, these policies and the resulting land management practices can be significantly different from their assumed relationships. Our team examined ways to document what we refer to as environmental biographies. This project took place in Indonesia where over two-thirds of the country is categorized as forests. We convened three multidisciplinary research teams comprising University of Hawaiʻi and Hasanuddin University students around state forests to record our environmental biographies. Our groups worked in an area of Sulawesi that surrounds the Bantimurung Bulusaraung National Park. Using a framework of decolonial methodologies, we undertook a variety of qualitative methods: participant observation, oral history interviews, and focus group discussions. In restory-ing the forest from a local lens, we learned about the dynamic narratives and processes that [re]produce these landscapes. They cannot be separated from historical legacies of development policy, indigeneity, and livelihood strategies of agricultural practices and migration.